


A Workaround

by Lunarium



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Adventure, Dreamscapes, Family, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11979624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: Tuuri absolutely cannot leave Saimaa on accounts of being non-immune to the Rash Illness, but she wants to see the greater world. Her clever grandmother has just the solution.





	A Workaround

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarSpray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarSpray/gifts).



“Follow me, child, and don’t lag behind!” 

Tuuri glanced about herself and took a tentative step forward. Her foot plummeted down in the pitch darkness, but she did not fall, her foot having found solid ground a second later. Giving a high-pitched excited squeak, she ran after her grandmother, clutching the notebooks and writing utensils close to her chest. 

Grandma Ensi smiled and motioned for her to follow her steps, keeping close over the water. The dark sea shimmered as if diamonds glimmered right under below the surface, reflecting what little light their starved hands could capture from beyond their reach. 

Something bright shoot past overhead, a long tail trailing behind. Instinctively Tuuri hid right under Ensi’s fur cloak, a moment later realizing it was merely a shooting star in the dreamworld. Its light-trail left a smear in the dark sky, momentarily glittering amidst grey clouds before trickling down like golden rain. 

Ensi glanced back and chuckled at the look of awe on Tuuri’s face. 

“You said you wanted to see the wider world?” 

Little Tuuri nodded. 

“And…we are here.” 

Tall double glass doors appeared before them, the glossy black surface giving no indication of what lay inside. The hinges creaked by Ensi merely touching it, swinging open slowly to allow them in. 

“When my friends and I were young, we were still very curious about the world our parents grew up in,” Ensi explained, “but the leaders of our villages would not allow anyone outside closely-defined borders. Our slightly older friends—” 

“Veeti?” Tuuri interjected. 

“Yes, older friends like Veeti, and don’t interrupt me again! These friends who got a taste of that world spoke so longly for it that we could not take it any more. We found another means to escape past the fences. Mind you, we weren’t being reckless or anything. We knew what was at stake if we came into contact with the Silent World. We just needed to get…creative. 

“Turns out you can travel the world in dreams, so long as people’s memories can rebuild it. It may not be perfect, but it is the best we had to exploring what life was before our time. We could virtually explore the entire world, pieced back together by our collective minds.” 

Tuuri gasped at that. “And Onni doesn’t know about this?” 

Grandma Ensi snorted. “Your brother sniffles and cries when I just knock on the invisible doors of his haven! There’s more out here than monsters! Much more, if you mind where you step! 

“And there was a mage around here, already nearing adulthood by the time the Illness hit, who was very attached to a place outside the border. So attached that it became his Haven.” 

Standing there with a gleeful smile, Ensi flailed out her arms proudly as Tuuri slipped around her and took in her surroundings. The blue carpet beneath her feet glowed golden stars and planets in bright reds and violets and greens. Above her the light was dimmed dark, almost black, with thin tubes of bright light lining the walls bright enough to illuminate the entire Haven. 

Standing in neat rows were tall brightly-painted boxes with radio screens. Instead of keyboard they contained a handful of buttons and knobs that wobbled in all directions when grabbed and played with. 

“This is where the cool kids hung out back in the day,” Ensi said with as much imitation of the old generation as she could. “The old arcade. My friends and I loved to crash here and practice our magic.” 

It took moments for Tuuri to tear her eyes from the vivid painting of large reptilian creatures attacking a vehicle, wondering where that came from and hoping beyond hope those lizards didn’t actually exist at one point. 

“Wouldn’t you love to see the movie for that one,” Ensi said. “I know of another mage who was attached to a video rental store from eons back. You can watch the movie in the backroom. But first, go and play! You’ll be the only human in your time who gets to experience being in an arcade!” 

Laughing, Tuuri rushed to the nearest arcade game. 

“You need your coin,” Grandma Ensi reminded Tuuri. Remembering the coin that she slipped into her pocket right before tucking Tuuri in for the night, Tuuri dug it out, positively glowing at learning that the coin carried with her through the journey to the dreamworld. This was wonderful, she thought, her heart hammering excitedly. When her grandmother promised her there would be a way for her to travel outside of Saimaa, she didn’t dream to dare. But _this_? 

She found the insert slot, slipped the coin in, and stretched herself on the tips of her toes excitedly to read the screen. 

“Lalli doesn’t about this place?” 

“Doesn’t seem interested when I mentioned it.” 

“I’m going to rub it in his face!” 

“That’s nice, dear.”

After playing a few rounds, Tuuri brought out her notebooks and scribbled what she had experienced, sketched out the arcade, and drew some of her favorite characters from the games. She went around the arcade, sampling each of the games, reading up on their stories, her eyes glued to the screen. _These_ were the stories past humans entertained themselves, all digital before lost to the changing world. 

“I know how I can translate this!” she said excitedly, pointing to some words on the screen. “They’ll find all of this useful at the base! Maybe they’ll hire me as a skald!” 

“I’m sure they will,” Ensi said, grinning. 

When Tuuri was done with one machine, she moved over to the next, and on it went till her notebook was teeming with a lexicon of Finnish, Icelandic, English, Swedish, Dutch, French, and German. One page even contained notes of a special machine where none of the letters were shaped the same as the other languages. Tuuri had no idea how she was able to read Japanese, and she wasn’t sure if she was able to copy the words correctly, but she managed to scrape just enough words she hoped someone would find useful back at the base. 

“These will not disappear when I wake up?” Tuuri asked, gripping the notebook as if her life depended on it. And maybe it truly did. She never wanted to forget tonight. 

Ensi smiled, warm and mild. “They will wonder where you went to find such artifacts, and you can’t take photographs inside a dream, however much I wish that were so. But there will be someone in the academy who will know enough of the Old World languages to recognize something in your notebook, and you can take it from there. This will get you into the school.” 

“You think so?” Such a hope-filled, silly question, but Tuuri couldn’t help herself. 

Ensi hopped off the machine she had been sitting on and ruffled with Tuuri’s hair before turning her own hair a vivid green. 

“ _Right on, dude!_ ” she said in that same voice that must have been used in the past. Laughing at her own joke, her appearance morphed back to normal. “I think you will make the finest skald, granddaughter!”

*

Cracking her eyes open, Tuuri was momentarily disappointed to learn she was back in the real world, but the feeling dissipated the moment her hand slipped in the pocket of her nightgown. Smiling as her fingers noticed the lack of a coin and curled over a loose paper, she yanked out the sheets and read over her notes from the visit to the arcade, her heart pounding quicker with delight with each line. The dream was real. It had really happened. She had really left her home.

Acting quick lest she forgot any other detail, as she was wont to do upon waking from any other dream, she pulled out her notebook and some pens and began jotting down everything she remembered that she didn’t include in the notes. Smiling, she imagined Onni’s face if he ever found out, that somehow, with the help of good and clever grandma Ensi, Tuuri had figured out a means to safely step out of Saimaa.


End file.
